


Hange's List

by JulyStorms



Series: Before Colors Broke into Shades [33]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alcohol, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-03
Updated: 2015-04-03
Packaged: 2018-03-21 03:15:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3675339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JulyStorms/pseuds/JulyStorms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's drunk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hange's List

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: #20. Things you said that I wasn't meant to hear. Levihan. Requested by [Bloodyredpancakes](http://http://bloodyredpancakes.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr.
> 
> I finally have the excuse to share my drunk!Hange headcanon with the world. Can I get a hell yeah?!

She's drunk.

Hange rarely drinks enough to get drunk; the experience is far from pleasant for everyone around her, and she herself hardly remembers a thing when it's over.

But for some reason, she must have gotten carried away—there's an entire bottle sitting next to her on the floor, empty. Levi stands in her doorway and wonders how she might have ended up like this. Maybe she had been talking to someone: drinking and talking and forgetting that when she lifts the veil of sobriety it always makes her remember.

She's mumbling to herself when he crouches down next to her. He knows what she's saying, and he refuses to let himself listen.

"You're not going to puke, are you?" he asks.

She looks up at him as if she's only just noticed his arrival; maybe she has. "Huh?"

"You'd better not puke on me," he tells her, and pulls her arm over his shoulder so that he can make her get to her feet.

He knows he shouldn't care overmuch about what happens to her. It's not like she'll die, being only a little drunk, after all. But he does care a little; he can't help himself. It's hard not to care when he knows her eyes are damp and swollen and red from crying; the worst part is that Hange only starts drinking with fun in mind: with having fun and being good company. But it always ends up like this, with her upset and crying and on a floor somewhere.

"You reek," he says, unsure if he's saying it to distract himself from the way she makes him feel, or to inform her that she smells as if she's bathed in ale.

"I can't remember," she tells him as he makes her sit on the edge of her bed, as he tugs off her boots and sets them carefully on the floor nearby though Hange herself would kick them off and not care where they landed. "I'm missing someone. I counted so many times, but I just—"

It always comes down to this.

She begins to mumble again, and he tries to tune out the words but can't. Some leak through. Some _always_ leak through: Isabel Magnolia, Farlan Church, Flagon Darlett, Sairam—

Levi focuses on getting Hange out of her harness. The buckle over her chest comes free, and he slowly works around her attempt to count on her hands. The longer she mumbles, the more her voice cracks and the harder she is to understand. A part of him is relieved that he can't understand the names anymore, because he knows who the most recent on her list are going to be, and he doesn't want to think about that.

"See?" she says, wiping clumsily at her face with the back of one hand; all she manages to do is smudge the tears and hit her glasses so that they sit crooked on the bridge of her nose. She'll get a headache like that.

"See what?" he asks, even though he already knows. He sets her harness down over the back of her desk chair, and lifts her feet onto the bed.

"I'm missing someone," she says. "I've forgotten someone." She shuffles to crawl under the blankets and Levi takes the opportunity to pluck her glasses off of her face. "Who'm I missing?"

She prides herself on remembering names and faces. There are some people who have nobody else to remember them after they die, she explained to him once. She's okay with being that person. She can't help but be that person.

"Ilse Langnar," he tells her.

She always forgets Ilse. She had liked her, and there hadn't been a body for a long time; Hange had foolishly held out some kind of hope—until recently. Until Ilse's body had been discovered...and her journal with it.

"Oh." She doesn't say anything else for a long time.

Levi doesn't know why he stays as long as he does. Her room is untidy and he doesn't like that, so he picks up a few things. He doesn't care about her room, but he pretends to. He pretends that it matters that her books stand up straight instead of tilted to the side; he pretends that he's annoyed that her desk is cluttered.

He doesn't care about those things. This isn't his room. He doesn't have to live in it.

It's Hange he cares about. He wishes she wasn't the sort of person to remember every face and every name: for her sake.

He glances over to the bed.

She's looking at him, eyes half-lidded. At least she's not crying anymore. At least she's stopped mentioning names. "Levi," she says. He watches her lips form the word or he'd have never known she'd said a thing; her voice is too soft.

"What."

"Don't make me add your name, too. Okay?"

"You're being ridiculous."

"I don't wanna say it."

"You're drunk is what you are."

She laughs: a sad, hollow sound. He can't remember the last time she laughed and it was carefree. "Please?"

"I'm not promising you anything," he tells her. It sounds mean, but he refuses to let himself fall into the habit of making promises he can't keep.

She sighs and sinks back against her pillows. "I know," she says. "I just—I'm afraid that someday...my list will end in _your_ name—"

"You need to stop drinking. Forever."

She hiccups. It doesn't make her laugh; instead, it startles one last tear out of her. God, he fucking hates that. "I don't want to _lose_ —"

"Hange," he says.

The sound of her name quiets her.

"You would never say this shit if you were sober."

"I wouldn't?" she asks.

"No."

He assumes she's thinking about this fact, the fact that completely sober, she is realistic but also painfully optimistic, but when he sets a book on her desk that has ended up, somehow, open on the floor, he notices that her eyes are closed. She's fallen asleep.

Maybe it's a blessing that she won't remember any of this in the morning.

But he will.


End file.
